Cision sees 2% organic revenue growth in Q1

Total revenue for the quarter was up 23% to $179.3 million. Excluding the impact from purchase accounting, revenue was up 23.6% to $180.2 million.

"We’re beginning to see momentum in our financial performance, momentum in the adoption of our customers in C3 [Cision’s cloud product], and momentum in the development and rollout of our industry-transforming solutions like Cision ID," CEO Kevin Akeroyd said in an earnings call on Tuesday.

Akeroyd also highlighted Cision’s ability to meet its "innovation" goals, saying it now has more than 300 customers for its Impact product, which launched in January.

Clients are also leaning into "earned media behavior data, which we call Cision audiences, outside of C3 and Impact, to execute and optimize campaigns across paid, owned, and earned media, with Cision ID as the backbone," Akeroyd said. "We believe this will make Cision a CMO opportunity and priority, not just a chief communications officer priority and opportunity."

Operating income increased 79.8% to $12.2 million, while net loss was down 98.2% to $0.4 million.

By region, Cision realized the greatest growth from EMEA, which saw a 75.7% boost to $50.6 million, from a strong performance in Germany and the Nordics, while the U.K. and France were "sluggish," said CFO Jack Pearlstein on the earnings call.

The Americas saw an 8.9% bump to $121.8 million due to increased cross-selling and solid sales execution. APAC revenue, driven by new sales in South Korea and Japan and the rollout of C3 in China, increased 32.6% to $7 million.

Excluding the acquisition of media measurement and analysis platform Prime Research, Cision’s subscription customers and transaction customers were both up year-over-year, 1.2% and 5.6%, respectively.

Revenue for each customer category was up as well: 2% for subscription customers and 5.9% for transaction customers.

Cision updated its financial outlook for 2018, saying it expects to capture full-year revenue in the range of $722 to $732 million. It also expects stronger net income between $8 and $10 million.

Cision also disclosed the previously unreported revenues of its back-to-back acquisitions of Montréal-based Cedrom-SNi and Prime. In 2017, Cedrom brought in $15 million and Prime garnered $44 million.